The Ridge Road Cemetery Association, Also Known as the Falls Cemetery

One of the oldest cemeteries in Monroe County is the Ridge Road Cemetery Association, also known as the Falls Cemetery in Greece, New York with its first known burial in 1811.

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Photo by Jo Ann Ward Snyder

It all started in 1808 when Daniel Budd (c. 1770-1850) and his wife Chloe Allen (1787-1871) of Dutchess County, New York purchased land in what is now the Town of Greece on Ridge Road, which at that time was little more than a dirt track in the wilderness. It wasn’t until two years later, in May of 1810, that Daniel and Chloe moved here with their children, all their belongings, and 18 head of cattle. Soon they owned almost all the land on the south side of Ridge Road between what is now Mitchell Road and Latona Road, including this cemetery. Daniel was a farmer and tavern and hotel owner, as well as a town official.

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In 1827, a deed was created and later filed in 1836. It transferred the burial ground from Daniel and Chloe Budd to the men representing the Ridge Road Cemetery Association. Monroe County Deeds, Liber 35, pages 540-54

M. B. Loper, age 29, was the first person interred here in 1811 and as per the sign on the building, the cemetery was officially established in 1813. The Budds still owned the property, but it appears it was an unofficial community cemetery with unrelated Greece pioneer family burials occurring every year. In 1827, Daniel and Chloe sold this burial site to a committee of respected Town of Greece citizens, Frederick Rowe, Asahel Tucker, and John Williams, who was the Town of Greece’s first supervisor. Thus, the Ridge Road Cemetery Association was born. The deed was finally officially recorded nine years later in 1836.

According to the Cemetery Association records, the Falls Cemetery name came about as it was the halfway point of the stagecoach stops enroute to Niagara Falls.

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Photo by Jo Ann Ward Snyder

From the early 1900s through 1963, the Ridge Road Cemetery was the site of the Town’s Memorial Day remembrances, complete with a parade of town officials, veterans, and local community groups. The parade went from the Greece Memorial Town Hall, which was then on Ridge Road, and ended at this Cemetery with prayers and benedictions. Taps was played, graves visited with wreaths and flags left behind. The cemetery is home to 5 Revolutionary War veterans, 16 from the War of 1812, 25 from the Civil War, and 5 from the Spanish American War, as well as innumerable veterans of later military conflicts and service in the 20th and 21st centuries. Of note, thirteen Greece Town Supervisors have been laid to rest here.

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1852 Greece Map, arrow shows location of the Ridge Road Cemetery Association Aka Falls Cemetery, on the corner of Ridge Road and Latona Road (then Cemetery Road). The William Falls Hotel had just been purchased by William Fall in 1850, it had previously been the Budd Hotel and Tavern.

Since 1827, the Ridge Road Cemetery Association has operated the cemetery as a nonprofit with a governing board that meets annually. At the present time, Katie Meeson is the President. The family of current cemetery Superintendent David Hare, Jr. has long been associated with this cemetery. For more than fifty years members of the Hare family have been looking after it. David is the 3rd generation, along with his cousin Diane Hare, following in the footsteps of his father David Senior, Uncle Claude, and Grandfather Gordon Hare.

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Hannah Hopper (1800-1881) Bartholf
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Stephen Bartholf (1798-1879)

Pioneers Stephen (1798-1879) and Hannah Hopper (1800-1881) Bartholf

Courtesy Linda Cushman Dowell and tombstone photos by Jo Ann Ward Snyder

The north section of the cemetery is the location of pioneer graves, with families represented by the names of Bartolf, Benedict, Britton, Buckman, Filer, Hopper, Justice, Kenyon, Lay, Lowden, Mitchell, Payne, Perrin, Rowe, Shearman, Weiland, and too many more to list. The west and south sections have more recent burials. In addition, a section was added in 1967 for the remains from the Wagner Cemetery on Long Pond Road that was closed to make way for the construction of Park Ridge, now called Unity Hospital.

From its founding over two hundred years ago, the Ridge Road Cemetery Association, also popularly known as the Falls Cemetery, is a respectful, beautiful. and active private cemetery that continues to serve our community.

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Photo by Katie Meeson

Extra information will be in Volume 2 of the Pioneer Families of Greece, New York coming out soon.

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Judson S. Kenyon

An ashtray artifact surfaced during a recent inventory at the Greece Museum. Lee Strauss and Bill Sauers were kind enough to bring it to my attention and help research what and who it was all about.

Many years ago, every time my late mother and I would drive past a certain farmhouse on English Road, she would announce, “That’s Juddy Kenyon’s house!” Kenyon being an ancestral name, I would press her for details on the relationship, but she was uncharacteristically vague, “Some sort of cousin.” As it turns out, he was my 4th cousin 4 times removed, but prominent enough for her to have claimed him.

As it also turns out, the house to which Mom was referring all those times is a good two miles west of the Judson Kenyon farm property, but the houses are very similar in appearance and if Mom ever actually set foot in “Juddy’s,” it had probably happened 85 years before.

Judson S. Kenyon was born in 1872 in Barry County, Michigan, to William James Kenyon and Elizabeth L. Rowe of Greece. Originally from Rhode Island, William’s parents, and presumably William, farmed in Michigan, but there were extensive Kenyon family ties to Greece, New York. By 1875 William, Elizabeth, and 3-year-old Judson were living in Greece.

Judson, a graduate of Rochester Business Institute, married Mrs. Kate (Rickman) Justice in the Long Pond Road home of her parents, Mr. & Mrs. Arthur Rickman, in April of 1920 (Kate was the widow of Willard H. Justice and had two children by that marriage.) After their wedding trip out west, they lived at what is now 2428 English Road, where they farmed. Both houses still stand.

Judson S Kenyon (Ancestry)
Judson S Kenyon (Ancestry)
Judson S. Kenyon
(Greece Baptist Church)
Judson S. Kenyon (Greece Baptist Church)

During his 90-year lifespan, Judson was very active in Greece political, religious, and local government roles. At one time or another, he served as: deacon, clerk, teacher, trustee, treasurer, and historian at Greece Baptist Church; tax collector, justice of the peace, and member of the Town Board of Greece, NY; life member of Greece Grange…and a member of the Greece Republican Party for most of his life.

The base of the ashtray reads:
1948 Honoring Judson S. Kenyon
Over 50 Years a Republican
Greece Republican Organization

This ashtray was presented to Judson S Kenyon in 1948, in commemoration of his long-standing involvement in the Greece Republican Party.
This ashtray was presented to Judson S Kenyon in 1948, in commemoration of his long-standing involvement in the Greece Republican Party.

The ashtray was presented to him in 1948, in commemoration of his long-standing involvement in that organization. Way to go, Cousin Juddy!

Thanks to a 75-year-old ashtray and to my mother, whose geography may have been off, but whose
interest in family and Greece history were spot-on, I was prompted to tell the story of a prominent
Greece resident.

Judson S. Kenyon died in 1963 and is buried in Falls Cemetery, among many of his relatives.

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1066 Long Pond Road- THE BRITTON FAMILY HOMESTEAD – “FROM THE HISTORIAN’S FILE”

South side of 1066 Long Pond circa 1904- The Brittons standing on a stone wall.

Coming to Monroe County in the early 1800s, the Britton Family were early settlers in what was then called Rochesterville.

Alanson Phizarro Britton, the ninth child of thirteen, was born in the tiny village in 1820. While in his teens he ran a line boat on the Erie Canal and later he managed a Toll Gate on the plank road in Brighton which became East Avenue. While boarding at the Toll Gate house he met and later married, in 1849, a school teacher named Laura Lewis. By 1853 he became interested in a plot of land in the town of Greece. The first dwelling, on about 1.02 acres he purchased from John and Lydia Beal, was a log house. A small portion of this land had already been deeded for use as a schoolhouse to Greece Common School District #9 by the Beals. Shortly after the Civil War, Alanson began building the present Italian ate style home on the property. The timbers were cut from trees on the property, hauled to a sawmill, cut into useable lumber, and brought back to the building site.

The Britton farmstead, completed about 1870, was well known for its Hubbard Squash. By 1875 the Brittons had sold about an acre of the southern portion of the land near Maiden Lane to the Meth­odist Church for $700. Laura and Alanson raised four children, of which the two eldest died fairly young.

Mr. Britton was the Town of Greece Supervisor five different times from the late 1870s until 1901. By mutual agreement, elected supervisors only served a two-year term and retired but could run again after a two-year gap. Of all the 19th-century supervisors, Britton seems to hold the record for the number of times served. Alanson had a long life, dying at the homestead in 1912; Laura preceded him in 1910 with an equally long life. They are buried in the Falls Cemetery on Ridge Road. The Britton homestead is now about 140 years old and is again up for sale with 1.6 acres of the original 102 acres from 1853 remaining. House # 1066 is listed on the “101 historic sites in The Town Of Greece” and awaits a new owner who loves being surrounded by “friendly ghosts” of an important Greece family!

The Front view of the A.P. Britton Home Stead facing North East, Taken October 1, 2010 by Bill Sauers
The Front view of the A.P. Britton Home Stead facing North East, Taken October 1, 2010, by Bill Sauers
The Front view of the A.P. Britton Home Stead facing North, Taken October 1, 2010, by Bill Sauers
The Front view of the A.P. Britton Home Stead facing North, Taken October 1, 2010, by Bill Sauers

Photos, Data supplied by Alan Mueller, Greece Historian’s Office, Greece Historical Society

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